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Exciting and unexpected findings

Associate Professor Rod Dunbar (University of Auckland) talks about the exciting findings from Hayley Reynolds' research, in particular, showing the inaccuracies of the older anatomical description of lymphatic drainage.

Transcript

DR ROD DUNBAR There were a number of unexpected findings that came from this work, and I think that is what overseas people have found particularly exciting about it, is that Hayley's work has really shown that there are some predictable patterns of lymphatic drainage, which we probably didn't really suspect before. There is also some very, very unpredictable areas of the body where you've really got to be very careful to look at a number of different lymph node fields, as they call it, and a number of different places in the body for the sites where the melanoma might have spread.

There’s this anatomical description called ‘Sappey’s lines’, which is a description of how the body is divided up into lymphatic flow areas, and Hayley's work really shows the inaccuracy of that description. It's a very old description, of course, but it's nice to use real data to come up with a more modern description of it.